Babe Didriksen Zaharias

Zaharias was born to play sports. That’s all there is to it. She was an All-American basketball player in high school, won three Olympic medals in track and field — gold in the javelin and 80-meter hurdles, silver in the high jump — and won three Women’s U.S. Open golf championships, the third after being diagnosed with cancer, which she succumbed to in 1956 at age 45. (She also became the first woman to qualify for and play in a men’s PGA Tour event, when she competed in the Los Angeles Open in 1945.) Zaharias is considered one of the greatest athletes, male or female, of the twentieth century. When asked once how she could drive a golf ball so far, she famously replied, “I just loosen my girdle and let the ball have it.”